
E 302 



X-Ot.' 



'^t\s^Xn & f inkncg. 



No one has held IVIr. Webster's great powers in 
greater admiration, or his character in deeper 
reverence for many high and noble quaHties, than 
I have. I have regarded him as a national man, 
too great for even the great commonwealth of 
Massachusetts to claim him as exclusively her 
own, notwithstanding Faneuil Hall and Bunker 
Hill have so often trembled at the touch of his 
matchless eloquence. Most of what is written of 
him, I read with delight. The faintest echo of his 
vast fame gives me pleasure. 

It was a week ago that my eye rested on a 
work entitled " Reminiscences of Daniel Webster 
at the bar," by Peter Harvey. I anticipated both 
pleasure and profit from its perusal. I felt that a 
rich intellectual feast was about to be spread out 
before me ; for the banquet was provided by one 
who stood in the relation of an intimate and confi- 
dential friend to Mr. Webster, and who had enjoyed 
rare opportunities of studying the lights and shad- 
ows of his remarkable life. But when I turned to 
pages 1 21-123 of the book, I can scarcely express 
the pain and astonishment which their perusal oc- 
casioned. 



Mr. Harvey reports, that Mr. Webster told him, 
that he had, on one occasion, locked Mr. Pinkney 
up in one of the grand jury rooms of the capitol, 
and extorted from him, as he stood trembling like 
an aspen leaf, an humble apology which was re- 
peated the next day in open court. Now it is a 
very painful thing to be compelled to expose the 
gross inaccuracy of this whole statement ; and yet 
it will be clearly seen, that no near relative of Mr. 
Pinkney can suffer this to pass without the rebuke 
it so richly merits. All that is left to my uncle is 
his fair name ; and that no man shall assail with 
impunity. P^ither Mr. Webster did say all that is 
reported of him by Mr. Plarvey, or Mr. Harvey 
made it up, or else Mr. Harvey is in grievous er- 
ror, which I am free to avow is my own deliberate 
judgment. For this is the only solution of the 
problem which can save the memory of Mr. Webs- 
ter from the mor.t serious impeachment. 

The language imputed to Mr. Webster is as fol- 
lows. I prefer always to make exact quotations : 

"We passed into one of the ante-rooms of the capitol. I looked 
into one of the grand jury rooms, rather remote from the 
main court-room. There was no one in it, anil we entered. 
As we did so I looked at the door, and found that there was a 
key in the lock ; and, unobserveil by him, I turned the key 
and put it in my pocket. Mr. Pinkney seemed to be waiting 
with some astonishment. I ailvanced towards him and said: 'Mr. 
Pinkney, you grossly insulted me this morning, in the court 
room ; and not for the first lime either. In deference to your 
position and to the respect in which I hold the court I did 
not answer you as I was tempted to do, on the spot." He 
began to parley. I continued : 'you know you diti : don't add 
another sin to that; don't deny it ; you know you did it, and 



yuu know it was premeditated. It was deliberate ; it was pur- 
posely done ; and if you deny it, you state an untruth. Now 
I am here to say to you. once for all, that you must ask my 
pardon, and go into court to-morrow morning and repeat the 
apology, or else either you or I will go out of this room in a 
diiTerent condition from that in which we' entered it.' I w;is 
never more in earnest. He looked at me, and saw that my 
eyes were pretty dark and firm. He began to .say some- 
thing. I interrupted him. 'No explanations," said I, 
'admit the fact, and take it back. I do not want another word 
from you except that. I will hear no explanation; nothing but 
that you admit it and recall it. ' He tiembled like an aspen 
leaf He again attempted to explain. Said I : ' there is no 
other course. I have the key in my poi^ket, and you must 
apologize, or take what I give 30U.' At that he hum- 
bled down, and said to me ; 'you arc right: I am sorry; I 
did intend to bluff you ; I regret it, and ask your jiardon.' 
'Now, one promise before I open the door; and that is, that 
you will tomorrow morning state to the court that 3'ou have 
said things which wounded my feelings, and that you regret 
it.' Pinkney replied : 'I will do ^o.'" Harvey's J^rwrnmrna's 
of Daniel Webster, pp. 122, 123. 

Just before this graphic picture is drawn, Mr. 
Webster is represented as speaking of the posi- 
tion which Mr. Pinkney occupied, when he, Webs- 
ter, entered the bar at Washington. This is the 
language imputed to him by Mr. Harvey. It 
stands in closest connection: 

"I was a lawyer who had my living to get ; and I fell that, 
although I could not argue my cases as well as he cmild, still 
if my clients employed me, thev should have the best ability I 
had to give them, and I should do the work myself I did not 
propose to practice law in the vSupreme Court by proxy." 

Mark the next passage: 

•'I think that, in some pretty important cases I had, Mr. Pink- 
ney rather expected that I should fall into the current of his 
admirers, and divide my fees with him.'" 



4 
The italics are mine. Then follows this extraor- 
dinary sentence: 

"This I utterly refused to do. " 

Nothing but thought in the one sentence, a mere 
vague supposition, and in the next an utter refusal 
which is strangely irreconcilable with Mr. Webs- 
ter's acknowledged clearness of conception and ex- 
pression. No human ingenuity can reconcile the 
two sentences with each other, or bring them into 
agreement. How could he utterly refuse, when 
there was no application made? This by the way. 
Then follows immediately : 

"In some important case (I have forgotten now what the case 
was), Mr. Pinkney was employed to argue it against me. 

"On the occasion to which I refer, in some colloquial dis- 
cussion upon various minor points of the case, he treated me 
with contempt. He pooh-poohed, as much as to say it was 
not worth while to argue a point that I did not know anything 
about ; that I was no lawyer. I think he spoke of the '■gentle- 
man from ^'eiv Hampshire.'" (The italics are mine. ; "At 
any rate, it was a thing that every body in the court house, in- 
cluding the judges, could not fail to observe. Chief Justice 
Marshall himself was pained by it. It was very hard '' added 
Mr. Webster "for me to restrain my temper, and keep cool ; 
but I did so, knowing in what presence I stood." 

Now, in the first place, there are no grand 
jury rooms in the capitol, and never have been. In 
the second place, it is very unfortunate that Mr. 
Webster's memory should have failed just when 
it did; for the naming of the case would have prov- 
ed a very important link in the chain of circum- 
stances, and have helped us to meet the charge, 
so long delayed, in the way in which it should be 
met. Specification of //m^ and place is of price- 



5 
less value to a party accused. No one knew this 
better than Daniel Webster. It gives much of 
security to a person falsely arraigned, while it car- 
ries with it just responsibility to the accuser. Mr. 
Webster said, as Mr. Harvey reports, " I do not 
now remember what the case was." But while 
Mr. Webster did not remember the case, and 
therefore was unable to state it, it is perfectly ob- 
vious that it must have occurred, if it occurred at 
all, when Mr. Webster was new to the scene and 
while he was the " the gentleman from New 
Hampshire." For he had just spoken of Mr. 
Pinkney's position at the bar, when he made his 
first appearance in Washington, using this signifi- 
cant language : "I have my living to get. I felt 
that although I should not argue my cases as well 
as he could, &c. &c. I think he spoke of thegen- 
tleman from New Hampshire" — language which he 
would never have used at a later day, for it is well 
known that Mr. Webster knew his powers, and re- 
lied on them implicitly, when he had enjoyed a 
ripe experience in the practice of the Court. 

This is an important point, and deserves to be 
well considered. For it helps us to fix the case 
somewhere between the 3ears 1813 and 18 17, 
when Mr. Webster left New Hampshire for Mas- 
sachusetts. It does this, despite of Mr. Webster's 
remarkable failure of memory. I say remarkable, 
for it will be borne in mind, that he remembered 
the insult offered ; he remembered the apol- 
ogy enforced ; he remembered all that he said in 
the interview, to the minutest word ; he remember- 



6 
eel all that Pinkney did in his self-humiliation ; he 
remembered the effect on the Court: And yet, mir- 
abiU dichi^ he did not remember the case ! I call 
this a remarkable failure of memory, in one, who, 
it is said, retained in such vivid recollection all else 
that occurred, even to the key in the door. 

Mr. Webster went to Congress, (extra session,) 
from -A^^?c' Hainpsliire, in May, 1813. He remained 
a member until March 181 7. In 1817, he took up 
his permanent abode in Boston. This is a matter 
of history. During all this time he was counsel in 
only three cases in the Supreme Court — The St. 
Lawrence from New Hampshire, 18 14, Crai7ch,Vol. 
VIII, 435, The Grotius, CrancJi, Vol. viii, 467, and 
Paulet V. Clarke, 181 5, Cranch. Vol. ix, 295. The 
fewness of the cases ought to have assisted a 
memory less noted for its extraordinary retentive- 
ness than Mr. Webster's. 

In all this time, while Mr. Webster was a mem- 
ber of Congress from New Hampshire, I am bold 
to say, and [ defy contradiction, that he and Mr. 
Pinkney were never engaged in any case in the 
Supreme Court, either on the same side or oppo- 
site sides. I speak from the record. That cannot 
lie. Mr. Pinkney was not of the counsel in either 
of the cases above cited, and they were the only 
ones that Mr. Webster argued from 18 13 to 1817. 
In 18 16 Mr. Pinknc)' went abroad, and did not re- 
urn until 18 18. 

Am I not then warranted by the record, in say- 
ing that there is not the slightest ground for this 
storv which comes to us so hicjhlv colored, and 



7 
in such dramatic garb. On any fair interpreta- 
tion of the language imputed to Mr. Webster, we 
are justified in the conclusion : that the case, if 
it ever existed, must have been coetaneous 
with the period of his earlier practice at the 
bar of Washington, and while he was the "gen- 
tleman from New Hampshire." Now the rec- 
ords of the court show, that a conflict between 
Mr. Webster and Mr. Pinkney, in all those years, 
was a sheer impossibility, seeing they were never 
employed in the argument of the same cause from 
1813 to 1817, in that highest tribunal of the coun- 
try.^ 

Can stronger proof be demanded that Mr. Har- 
vey is in error? Does it look like Daniel Webster, 
this speaking of a grand jury room in the capitol, 
when no such room is in existence, and this strange 
forgetfulness of the fact, that the records of the 
Court show the utter impossibility of the thing al- 
leged? It is indeed a matter of unfeigned surprise 
to me, that any one who shared Mr. Webster's 
confidence and love, could impute to him such a 
tissue of contradictions, llierc must be a mistake. 
In tenderness to Mr. Webster, I am constrained to 
believe there is. 

I feel that I might safely rest my defence here. 
For it is not possible to resist the evidence I have 
educed from the records, or to escape the clinch- 
ing force of the words, " the gentleman from New 
Hampshire"— words which ii'o limit t\\Q boundaries 
of the charge. 

But I will pursue the subject a step farther, and 



proceed now to show, that from 1817 to 1822, 
there is no shadow of proof, that such a scene as 
that portrayed occured, but proof directly the re- 
verse. 

The first case in which Mr. Pinkney appeared, 
after his return to the United States, was M'Cul- 
loch V. State of Maryland. Mr. Webster opened 
the argument on the same side with Mr. Pinkney. 
He was not then new to the scene, nor was he the 
gentleman from New Hampshire. He hailed from 
Massachusetts. It is obvious that there could have 
been no insult offered, and no apology made on 
that occasion. Justice Story, a Massachusetts man, 
passing Mr. Webster by, singles out Mr. Pinkney 's 
speech: "I never in my life heard a greater speech, 
it was worth a journey from Salem to hear it ; he 
spoke like a great statesman and patriot, and 
sound constitutional lawyer. 7\11 the cobwebs of 
sophistry and metaphysics about State sovereignty 
and State rights he brushed away with a mighty 
besom." (Story's life Vol. i. 325.) 

The late Virgil Maxy, whose tragic death on 
board the Princeton saddened all hearts, a man of 
rare ability, and an honored son of Maryland, said 
it was the greatest constitutional argument ever 
addressed to any court. It will be borne in mind 
that this was the very topic which Mr. Webster 
so ably and eloquently discussed in his immortal 
speech against Hayne, many years after. Story 
was full of rapture over that speech. Could it 
have been possible for him to have kept silence, if 
the great advocate from his native State had been 



9 
so wantonly outraged in open court by Mr. Pink- 
ney? Besides, in the unremembcred case to which 
Mr. Webster is reported to refer, they were on op- 
posite sides. " Mr. Pinkney was employed to 
aro-Lie it against me." 

The true state of the fact is this: they were op- 
posed to each other for the first time in 182 1, 
Wheaton, vi, 453; again in 1821, Wheaton, vi, 
489; and finally in 1822, Ricard v. Clarke, Whea- 
ton, VII, io5. It will be remenbered that in all 
these cases Wheaton w^as the Reporter, and must 
have witnessed all that occurred. He wrote the 
life of William Pinkney, was himself a northern 
man, and yet not the slightest allusion is made by 
him to any difficulty, either insult offered, or apol- 
ogy made. In two of these cases Justice Story 
delivered the opinion of the Court ; and yet he is 
as profoundly silent, notwithstanding he did make 
mention of an incident that occurred between Pink- 
ney and Emmet, in the argument of a case in prize 
law. 

It will be borne in mind that this alleged inter- 
view between Webster and Pinkney was without 
witnesses. "There was no one in it, (the room) and 
we entered." So that if the narrative of Mr. Harvey 
be accepted as accurate, Mr. Webster must occupy 
the most unenviable position, to use no stronger 
language. His great antagonist was dead. The 
secret was kept carefully locked up in his own bos- 
om, until it could be divulged without the seeming 
possibility of a refutation, since the case was not 
remembered, and when there could be no responsi- 



lO 

bility incurred by the publication of it. A rose- 
colored description is given of his own heroic 
bravery, which is placed in a sort of poetic contrast 
with the dastardly cowardice of his rival. It is a 
very easy thing to hold prn^ate interviews with oth- 
er people, and long after they are dead, dress up 
the act behind the scene, so as to make an Achilles 
of ourselves, and base poltroons of them. But 
will any honorable man hold back what he has to 
say of another, until that other is dead; and then 
seek to blacken his character, when tl:e opportuni- 
ty of nailing the falsehood to the counter, if it be 
a falsehood, is denied him ? I leave all honorable 
men to answer. 

It may be laid down as a lule most equitable 
and just, that no man should ever attempt to draw 
a picture of himself in contrast with another, and 
no man should ever attempt to remove the veil that 
conceals a scene in which he was an actor with no 
witnesses present, where another was concerned, 
and that too, long after his death, and when the very 
case in which the scene occurred was forgotten. 
Permit a man to do this ; and who is safe from 
grossest vituperation and slander ? Stabbing in the 
dark is no feat of heroism. It is no indication of a 
mind bent on right, or a heart given to noble deeds 
of valor. 

No one who knew Mr. Pinkney will believe this 
story. It is too artistically drawn. Mr. Pinkney 's 
courage had been too often tested to be questioned. 
Of powerful physical frame, and a moral nerve that 
few men possessed in equal degree, he had no oc- 



I I 
casion to quake and tremble in the presence of the 
disting-uished son of Massachusetts, even though 
"his eyes were very dark and firm. " 

No man dared to brand him a pohroon while he 
was living. Mr. Webster confesses that he did not 
resent in open court the insult alleged to have been 
offered. His silence during Mr. Pinkney's lifetime 
must be his bitterest condemnation, if we accept as 
correct Mr. Harvey's account of the case. Mr. 
Harvey must be in error then. Otherwise, I 
should be forced to the conclusion that Mr. Webs- 
ter had boasted of a feat of valor which he never 
performed, while he took good care not to boast of 
it until he had taken the wise precaution to screen 
himself from all responsibility. It surprises me 
that any near friend of Mr. Webster should have 
failed to see the dilemma in which this narrative, 
if true, must place him. The trumpeter of his own 
fame, the traducer of another long since dead, with 
no witness adduced, and not even the case remem- 
bered ! 

I call the public to bear witness that this is a most 
wanton assault, calmly and deliberately made. The 
repose of the dead is invaded. The very grave is 
outraged. Pinkney is not alive to defend his fair 
name. Can any man who knew Mr. Webster be- 
lieve that he did so mean a thine as to indulge in 
such disorustinor self-laudation and sfross abuse of his 
dead rival? I hold that the narrative recorded is a 
moral impossibility. Daniel Webster was not a 
bully. Every instinct of his nature would have 
recoiled from such a scene. It is not like him. 



I 2 

And no mdn who knew William Pinkney will be- 
lieve that Mr. Webster, if he had been a bully, 
would have dared to do it in Pinkney's lifetime, 
and to his face. It does not comport with the dig- 
nity of the Court, for Judge Marshall would have 
rebuked an act of such gross discourtesy on the 
spot. 

I turn then from Mr. Peter Harvey, who has re- 
corded it, to the many warm admirers of Mr. Webs- 
ter, and address to them this my solemn remon- 
strance. And I greatly mistake the character of 
the men to whom I address this appeal, if they do 
not discard the deed, as one of which Mr. Webs- 
ter could not possibly be guilty. 

I again declare that I do not believe that Mr. 
Harvey made it up. I am quite sure that he is 
earnest and honest in his conviction of its truth. 
But he is liable to error — and I am satisfied that 
he is in error — an error that does the grossest in- 
justice to both of these distinguished men. I can 
conceive how the mistake occurred. At all events, 
this is the only charitable construction I can put on 
the strange, strange narrative. 

It may be said that this defense is long delayed. 
My answer is, that I had no knowledge of the ex- 
istence of the book, or of its contents, a week ago. 
It may be said, why revive the subject at this late 
day? I reply, because that book may pass into his- 
tory : and also, because of the high reputation of 
its hero, it may be read in years to come, when 
men will not pause to enquire whether what it con- 
tains is true or false, and when, perhaps, silence 



'3 

will be considered proof of acquiescence 

afford'r^ '"'%°*"' "''"»' '" *^ ^""^ ^^'lich might 
hi W li; p' ?°"^"^^"'- Mr. Webster's instruct- 
ing Wlham Pmlcney ,„ Biackstone mifrht excite i 
sm,Ie m tliose who know that Pinfeney^never part 

BhH-<f/ ^i?'-^ ^"''■'^ "^ ™=^ ^■'^ femili^-- with 

o/Th'falS "" '" "■"^^"^ "'^ «^-^"^«"^ 

What Mr. Webster thought or said of Mr. Pink- 

"hauVhl'Tf; '''^^"Sives me no concern, save 

oua i V Im.1 ''P'^; '^'P^"'' ""y '^^^ °f *at noble 
quality which IS nowhere more beautiful!)- expressed 
than m h,s noble speech against Hayne-the gual 
.ty that takes no delight in draggin^l others dlt 
At a moment when the heart does c^ive out its 
Zw roo'dr'^'J^^- Webster asked permissiol to 
Pini^^. J°t "'"■P*^'' '" '"^ ^P'<="did eulogy on 

pa hos and power- words which could never have 
fel en on the grave of the dastardly wretch whi h 
Mn Harvey now tells us Webster declared hin, to 

Marshall, Story, and Taney have all spoken 

llst?e Zl *'""'' g'-f. test lights that hav'e shed 
ustre on law m courts of ustice. They were the 
hree sev-erest judges of legal eloquence and lega^ 
og,c and none could so probe to the bottom Te 

iecord W^- l""^' "'f , '° ^'f^'- They are on 
terms of th^ ?"^ °^"'"?' ^'- Pi"l<ney was on 
^SI^ni^l^h^JIl^stjrMmateJrK^^ while his re- 

'''"'•'■ '^•"'"t"' txidltstnce,; Manli 2nd, li^. ' 



14 
lations to the other two were of the most genial 
nature. 

The Reports of the Supreme Court are an endur- 
ing monument of his vast learning and surpassing 
eloquence and penetration. The late Walter Jones, 
himself the embodiment of all that constitutes tru- 
est logic and suLlimest eloquence, said to me, a 
short time before his death, that William Pinkney 
was a man of a century, and that is what Story says 
of him in his life. 

I would not detract from Daniel Webster to ex- 
alt or magnify my uncle, if that were possible. I 
am too jealous of my country's heritage of glory 
to be betrayed into any such weakness. I would 
not dim the lustre of a single star in her glorious 
galaxy. Dulany, Martin, Hamilton, Dexter, Em- 
met. Spencer, Jones, Binney, Tazewell. Wirt, Up- 
shur, Legare, Robert C. Winthrop, Prentiss, 
Wharton, Johnson, McMahon. Marshall. Story, 
Taney, are all hers, and to them she can point the 
eye of the ages to come ; and not to them only, 
but to others not less than they. — Clay, Calhoun, 
Webster, and Wright. I knew Mr. Webster's 
powers too well, and I had felt his magnetic influ- 
ence too often not to be the willing witness to his 
marvelous grasp of intellect. But tamely to sub- 
mit to this effort of Mr. Harvry to malign the 
character of William Pinkney, by putting forth 
Mr. Webster as the sounder of his own trumpet 
and the revealer of Pinkney's cowardice, with no 
witnesses present, and in a case not remembered, 
I neither can nor will. 



i5 
In my early boyhood, my father expressed some 
anxiety to my uncle, as Mr. Wirt, a truly crreat 
man and a magnificent Lawyer, had iust appear- 
ed on the arena in the Court of Appeals at Annap- 
olis: and I shall never forget his sweet smile when 
he replied, " Ninian, the world is larcre enough for 
both of us." This was in conference with his 
brother, with whom, if with any one, he would 
have indulged freedom of criticism. But not a 
word of detraction escaped him. In no letter of his 
can you find a line that refiects on the fair fame 
of any of the great men with whom he contested 
the claim to supremacy. He had his foibles. But 
censoriousness and detraction were not among them. 
No one can regret more deeply than I do the 
necessity that is laid upon me of vindicatimr my 
uncle s memory from this ferocious assault. 'l re- 
joice, however, that I can discharge my duty 
without reflecting on Daniel Webster,— whose 
wonderful talents I admire as much as any man 
living and whose character for truth and honor I 
would still hold in deepest reverence-or without 
any impeachment of Mr. Harvey, save a grievous 
error of memory, and a not less grievous error of 
judgment. 

Shakespeare says : 

"Such tricks hath sliono- iina.!:,n'nation ; 
That if it woukl but apitrehend some joy, 
It comprehends some liringer of tliat joy : 
Or in the nio^lit, imai)-ining- some fear, 
How easy is a Ijusii suppos'd a hear? 
Error on his part is the shield I would hold 



i6 
over the man whose love and confidence he shared. 
Sciito abjecto, and all that is left is the only other 
alternative, which I will not characterize as it de- 
serves. That other alternative I myself cannot 
accept. 

To use the language of the great Dr. Johnson, 
if we leave to this book its merit in some of the 
criticisms it passes on the men of other days, we 
may well ask "what shall be its praise ?" 

Randall in his life of Thomas Jefferson says: 
(when speaking of the "future Attorney General 
of the United States, and the future first Ameri- 
can forensic orator of his day/') 

"No American citizen of any partv will ddubt the perfect sin- 
cerity of the character of William Pinkney of IMaryland. He 
was one of those rare men who engage in nothing with friend 
or foe, to which they cannot carry a lo}al and stainless good 
faith." Vol. in. 272-275. 

And yet this is the man who is denounced as a 
coward, after an ominous silence of fifty years, 
with no witnesses adduced, and in the face of the 
records which prove the thing charged an impos- 
sibility; while Silas Wright, one of the profound- 
est reasoners of his age, and the just pride of 
New York, is declared to be a vastly overrated 
man, without claim to the distinction he enjoyed 
while living, or the deference that was paid to 
him in the United States Senate. Surely this is 
a new sic itur ad astra. 

William Pinkney, 

Assistant (Bishop of Maryland. 
July. 30th, 1878. 



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